From London to Elista

Authors: Evgeny Bareev and Ilya Levitov
New In Chess (2007)
400 pages
$34.95

Reviewed by John Donaldson

Not too long ago it looked like tournament books and game collections were on the way to being permanently replaced by a never ending series of opening monographs and works designed to raise the readers rating. Not so any more. The past couple of years we have seen some tournament and match books that compare with the best of all time (think NEW YORK 1924, ZURICH 1953, and PIATIGORSKY CUP 1966) and from a variety of publishers – CURACAO 1962 by Jan Timman (New in Chess), SAN LUIS 2005 by Alik Gershon and Igor Nor (Quality Chess), ELISTA DIARIES by Anatoly Karpov and Ron Henley (Ishi Press) and Topalov-Kramnik 2006 WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP – ON THE EDGE IN ELISTA by Veselin Topalov and Zhivko Ginchev (Russell Enterprises).

Add FROM LONDON TO ELISTA to the list. Written by GM Evgeny Bareev and Ilya Levitov, FROM LONDON TO ELISTA is actually three books in one as it covers Vladimir Kramnik's World Championship matches with Garry Kasparov, Peter Leko and Veselin Topalov as seen by one of his seconds (Bareev) and close friends (Levitov). The reader not only gets 44 well annotated games featuring instructive prose and detailed variations but also lots of behind the scenes commentary not only by Bareev but by fellow top Russian GMs like Boris Gelfand and Peter Svidler as well as Kramnik himself.

The heart of this book is the contribution by Evgeny Bareev, who is not only a world-class player but also an excellent annotator with a pronounced if dry sense of humor that has been preserved by the translators Jimmy Adams and Sarah Hurst. One difference between his annotations and those by Veslin Topalov in ON THE EDGE IN ELISTA is that Bareev covers the opening phase of the game in detail, explaining not only what both sides are trying to achieve but also putting things in context with previous theory and developments in the match.

FROM LONDON TO ELISTA is well produced. It's sturdily bound which is a good thing as it's a big book. The layout of one column for prose and two columns for games works well and there are plenty of diagrams. There are lots of black and white photos, which are clear enough though not of the level of those that appeared in Curacao 1962 which were good enough to frame. The price of $35 might put some off, but the book is well worth the money. There is months worth of material to read and study here.

Highly Recommended

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